1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to the field of wireless communications and more specifically to the systems and methods for dynamically managing multiple connections in a mobile Internet Protocol (IP) network.
2. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, multimedia and other. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple mobile devices by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and other types of wireless communication systems.
Most current wireless communication system support IP-based packet-switched networking for data and voice communications and, in particular, two most commonly used versions of the protocol, namely IPv4 and IPv6. Both versions of the protocol provide mobility support and allow mobile devices to remain reachable while moving between various wireless networks. In general, mobile IP allows a mobile device to move from one network to another without changing device's home addresses (HoAs), which are assigned to the mobile device by its home agent (HA), also known as a Local Mobility Anchor (LMA), residing in the home network. Packets may be routed to the mobile device using these addresses regardless of the mobile device's point of attachment in a foreign network.
For example, to remain reachable in IPv6 domain, a mobile device must create and maintain a binding between its HoAs assigned by the HA and its “care-of address” (CoA) in the foreign network by exchanging signaling messages with its HA, as provided by the Mobility Support IPv6 standard (RFC-3775). Alternatively, the binding may be created and maintained for the mobile device by the core IP network, as provided by the Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIP) standard (RFC-5213). In the latter approach, a proxy agent in the foreign network performs the signaling with the local mobility anchors in the home network and does the mobility management on behalf of the mobile device. In turn, local mobility anchors manage distribution of home addresses to the mobile devices, manage devices' binding states, and specify which services and applications are available to the mobile devices.
The network-centric mobility management approach provided by the PMIP standard (RFC-5213) has several advantages over the mobile-oriented approach (RFC-3775), some of which include shifting signaling/processing overhead from the mobile device to the core network, and reusing home agent functionality and the messages/format in mobility signaling. However, one of the limitations of the current PMIP standard is that it requires a mobile device to request all IP addresses for the lifetime of a PMIP session, at the time of the session setup. This generally aggravates the scarcity of IPv4 resources used by the home network, since the device may not use all the requested IP addresses during the lifetime of the PMIP session. In other words, the mobile device must be able to request to add/release IP addresses on a need-basis without affecting other services of the existing PMIP session.